Mathura, Uttar Pradesh: On 9 August and 14 August, officers of the Agra division of the North Central Railway demolished 135 houses in Mathura town’s Nai Basti, a cluster of brick and cement homes 250 m behind the Krishna Janmasthan temple complex, a group of Hindu temples that bring this town in western Uttar Pradesh (UP) several million tourists a year.
Muslim and Hindu homes shared boundary walls in a few places in Nai Basti, but Hindu houses remained untouched, said residents. Some said they had lived in these houses for more than seven decades; the houses themselves were 50 to 60 years old, standing on land being cleared by the railway for a project to connect the town with the nearby temple town of Vrindavan, lying 14 km north.
Kadir Khan, 50, sat under a tree near a heap of rubble that used to be his home in Nai Basti. “We have understood that this is a measure to remove us from here,” he told Article 14. “They do not want Muslims here.” He said the Hindu houses behind his house had not been touched.
His demolished home used to share a boundary wall with a row of homes that were still standing, he said, all belonging to Hindus.
Khan, who ran a small bakery shop next to his house, is now without livelihood.
Kunwar Narendra Singh of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), an opposition party in UP, told Article 14 that the North Central Railway had avoided clearing land where the Hindu community lived.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here .